Gathering common data requirements in COVID-19

26 March 2020

Ocean's Clinical Knowledge Manager (CKM) played an important role in the recent publication of the COVID -19 Templates for infection assessment and report. Both templates are available on the international CKM resources for vendors to use and deploy into applications. Read the article below to find out how the CKM tool supported international collaboration on a common data resource to help vendors, help clinicans during this health crisis

An Internationally Coordinated Response

As part of a coordinated response to the threat of a pandemic caused by the Corona virus, it is important to be able to swiftly deploy systems that can help in assessing the potential risk of an infection as well as provide a proper reporting infrastructure for confirmed infections.

Rapid Mobilization

A rapid response – from start to a deployed system within days – has now been made possible by using openEHR and its flexible archetype and templating methodology. This methodology is geared towards the ability to quickly adapt and deploy systems based on heavy reuse of existing published archetypes from the openEHR Clinical Knowledge Manager (CKM) - the public repository of internationally used clinical models, namely openEHR archetypes and templates.

Asynchronous Teamwork

No physical meetings have been required to do so: openEHR Systems vendors from across the world and other interested parties such as governments/health ministries can collaborate online using Ocean’s Clinical Knowledge Manager (CKM) to define and share the required archetypes and templates. The result is reusable across the world, either directly by openEHR-enabled platforms or indirectly as a formal data specification usable by non-openEHR systems.

The COVID-19 Templates

The created archetypes and templates are geared towards recording the information required to evaluate the potential risk of a COVID-19 infection as well as provide epidemiological reports for confirmed COVID-19 infections, in accordance with World Health Organisation (WHO guidelines). The work is available in the COVID-19 project of the Clinical Knowledge Manager, including templates for assessing a suspected COVID-19 infection and reporting a confirmed COVID-19 infection.

Ocean's CKM

Ocean’s Clinical Knowledge Manager (CKM) is a web-based tool designed for collaborative development, management and publishing clinical knowledge resources, such as openEHR archetypes and templates. It is not only used by openEHR International - where anybody is free to register and participate at https://ckm.openehr.org - but also by various national bodies around the world including Norway, Germany, Slovenia, and the UK to drive their own requirements gathering and dissemination.